Oedipus The King Research Paper

History:

• Laius, who ruled Thebes at the time, was told the prophecy that his son would kill him and sleep with his wife.
• He and his wife gave their baby son to one of their slaves, who were to bring the baby to Mt. Cithaeron, which was haunted by wild beasts.
• However, the slave felt pity for the baby, so he gave him to another shepherd from the city of Corinth located on the other side of the mountain.
• King Polybus of Corinth was presented with the baby and decided to bring him up on his own.
• Oedipus decided to leave his current city and find the oracle of Apollo.
• There he found out that he would kill his father and marry his mother
• To prevent this from happening he left, but he didn’t know that his father ruled the city …show more content…
New productions of Sophocles' play were performed in Paris and Vienna in the 19th century and were remarkably successful in the 1880s and 1890s. Sigmund Freud who we discussed about before, attended and wrote a book based on his feelings towards the play in 1899. He called his book “the first” and was published exactly 9 years after experiencing the play. He suggested that an Oedipal desire is a universal and emotional occurrence instinctive to human beings. He based this on his conditional observations of obsessed or normal children, and on the fact that the Oedipal Rex play was efficient on both prehistoric and modern audiences. Adding on he also claimed the play Hamlet was effective for the same …show more content…
• After puberty, the tenacity of the complex happens through the choice of a suitable replacement for the object of love.
• However, the Oedipus complex continues to be an unconscious controller throughout life. It also forms an everlasting link between wish and law.

People Involved:

Otto Rank:
Otto Rank proposed that a boy's powerful mother was the source of the super-ego, in the course of normal psychosexual development. Rank's theoretical struggle with Freud barred him from the Freudian inner circle; nevertheless, he later established the psychodynamic Object relation’s theory in 1925.

Melanie Klein:
Melanie Klein concentrated upon the early maternal relationship, proposing that Oedipal demonstrations are noticeable in the first year of life, the oral stage. Her proposal was part of the Controversial discussions at the British Psychoanalytical Association. Furthermore, Klein's work decreased the central role of the Oedipus complex, with the concept of the depressive position.

Jacques

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